Around Pac-10 hoops: Meet Oregon’s Malcolm Armstead

Washington was busted up by Oregon point guard Malcolm Armstead on Saturday afternoon. His 21 under-control points led the Ducks in their upset of Washington.

Armstead transferred from Chipola (Marianna, Fla.) College. His arrival has allowed mighty mite Tajuan Porter to play off the ball more. If teams want to pay more attention to Porter, so be it. They will do so at their own peril based on what Armstead has done in his first two Pac-10 games.

“He was the No. 1 JC point guard in the country and he’s playing like it,” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said.

Kent said Armstead was a scorer in high school where he averaged more than 30 points a game. In junior college, he became a pass-first point guard. Now, in Oregon’s open system, he’s able to use both skills to exploit opponents.

“We told him, you have to open your game up again and score,” Kent said. “He’s just coming of age and he doesn’t even know half the offense yet.”

Kent is impressed with Armstead’s composure on the road in the Pac-10. The Oregon coach lauded the Washington crowd — that’s called the high road folks considering what was being said to him Saturday — as the toughest in the conference.

“I was surprised how well he handled it,” Kent said. “E.J. Singler, Jamil Wilson, the other freshmen, they’ve been like that at Washington State, they’ve been like that on the road, they’ve been like that at home. One of the blessings of being hurt — TP, Joevan (Catron), Matt Humphrey — is we played a lot of guys a lot of minutes.”

Like any coach speaking about early season success, Kent is measured.

“You don’t get too up. We don’t get too down. Just go back to work,” Kent said, his team 10-4 and 2-0 in the Pac-10. “It’s just a matter of keeping them level-headed and let’s go back to work. This will not mean anything if we go lose our next three at home.”

How will sanctions affect this year’s USC club?
Much like Oregon, the Trojans had been busting up the national radar. At 10-4, 2-0, USC has won eight consecutive games and is starting to receive votes in the national rankings.

USC players like senior Dwight Lewis won’t get a chance at the postseason thanks to prior violations. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Getting healthy and point guard Mike Gerrity eligible led to the Trojans’ boost. Now, they have no postseason motivation.

Head coach Kevin O’Neill told the team Sunday morning about the sanctions. O’Neill was asked if he thought the one-and-done rule/culture had anything to do with prompting this kind of situation.

“Whenever you have rules for anything, some guys follow the rules, some guys don’t,” O’Neill said. “Some guys get involved with things, some guys don’t. That’s all there is to it. I don’t think it’s a one-and-done thing.”

O’Neill said the Trojans have no choice but to just move forward.

“I would hope it doesn’t affect our play at all,” O’Neill said. “We had a great practice (Monday), just finished a good practice (Tuesday). Not doing our job would be the worst thing in this whole situation. All of us, coaches and players, we know the situation, we can’t do anything about it. We can only control what we can control and that’s our effort and focus.”

The first-year Trojans coach said he knew something would come of what was an ongoing investigation when he agreed to be come coach. He, of course, didn’t know it would be this stiff a penalty.

“It was kind of like when my mother passed away,” O’Neill said. “I knew she was going to die for about a year, but it doesn’t make it any easier when it happens. It’s very difficult for our players to deal with. Very difficult for me to deal with.

“We’re disappointed, we’re not angry. We’re just going to deal with it the best we can.”

Grumble all you want about almighty USC, but it’s the current roster that gets clobbered for the nonsense from earlier. That’s a shame. The school and administrators deserve it, these players don’t.

The Trojans are at Stanford on Wednesday then play at conference favorite Cal on Saturday.

Arizona still recovering
After two years of an unsettled coaching situation and recruiting defections, Sean Miller is trying to get the Arizona program settled off.

Arizona’s Nic Wise may not have stuck around if he didn’t believe in the Wildcats’ freshmen class. (Harry How/Getty Images)

“Last April you’re looking at do I want to leave where I’m at to become the new head coach at Arizona,” Miller said knowing the program was reeling and the 25-year streak of making the NCAA tournament was on the line. “If you leave there with the anxiety in mind I could be the person who breaks a 25-year streak, then you never really should pick up and come out here.

“I’ve answered probably 400, 500, 600 questions on the streak. The streak has no bearing on what we’re doing here. We’re just trying to become a better team.”

It could have been worse. Miller was able to land recruits Derrick Williams, Lamont Jones and Solomon Hill very late. If not, the Wildcats may have lost their best player.

“If we didn’t have those three players I would say Nic Wise probably wouldn’t have returned for his senior year,” Miller said, “and we would have been very fortunate with our non-conference schedule that was already in place to win five total games on the season.”

Cal deals with another injury
Cal top reserve Jorge Gutierrez will be out for at least this weekend after spraining his right knee. Gutierrez is mentioned as one of the best perimeter defenders in the conference, often getting recognition whenever Venoy Overton’s name comes up. The sophomore averages 5.7 points and 3.2 rebounds per game, but in no way do those numbers reflect his true value to the Golden Bears.

Bracket buildingESPN.com’s Marc Stein has put out an updated Bracketology and has three Pac-10 schools in the NCAA tournament: Washington, Cal and Oregon. Stein has the Huskies as a five seed, Cal as a nine seed and Oregon as a 12 seed. The bids by conference are as follows: Big East (7), ACC (6), Big 12 (6), SEC (6), Big Ten (5), Atlantic 10 (4), Mountain West (3), Pac-10 (3), Missouri Valley (2), West Coast (2). The two WCC schools are Gonzaga and St. Mary’s.

Loose balls: Washington’s Quincy Pondexter and Washington State’s Klay Thompson are the two Pac-10 players on the midseason top 30 for the John Wooden Award. … Oregon’s Michael Dunigan was named Pac-10 player of the week. Kent said this is just the beginning for Dunigan. “The biggest thing is he changed his work ethic from when he came in the door to where he is now. He was 280 pounds and he’s playing now at 248, 249 and he’s taken the fat off and turned it into muscle. We spend a lot of time on Mike’s confidence because he’s still in the developmental stage right now.” … The Pac-10 tweaked the postseason conference tournament schedule after the USC news. The No. 1 seed receives a bye and the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds will play each other on the opening day of the tournament, Wed., March 10. Everybody will join in on Thurs., March 11.